Apple pushes iOS 4.3.3, addresses location database outrage

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Not everyone bothers to install iOS updates the minute they arrive, but today’s 4.3.3 push shouldn’t be ignored if you count yourself among the legion of iPhone users who let out a collective horrified gasp when Apple’s kinda-sorta-secret location database was outed by researchers recently. While security pros like F-Secure’s Mikko Hypponen believed the data was being used to feed Apple’s global location database — enabling iOS devices to avoid unecessarily probe for coordinates using GPS when a less power-hungry read could be accurately ascertained using Wi-Fi. Plenty of other brainy types agreed, and it turns out they were right. Apple confirmed as much only days later.

Today’s iOS 4.3.3 update makes it very clear that it’s designed to nip location concerns in the bud, reducing the maximum size of the cache and deleting the database entirely when a users chooses to disable Location Services. The update also prevents the location database from being backed up to iTunes.

It remains to be seen how that whole lawsuit thing will be resolved, but remember that Apple did get users to opt in — albeit somewhat cryptically. Hypponen points to the fairly innocuous-looking “you can help Apple improve its products” dialog which appears during the iTunes installation process. While “diagnostic information” doesn’t sound at all like location data, clicking through to Apple’s privacy page makes it clear that your whereabouts are indeed part of the delicious information you agreed to transmit back to the collective.